cremation

My mother became the first in our family to choose cremation. I thought I was going to be first. She was raised Baptist, but in later years became a member of the Congregational Church which was less strident than her Baptist upbringing.

Well my brother is a fundamentalist. He sent his children to a well known christian high school where he traveled thirty five miles every day to take his three children to the school. He then insisted that they all attend christian colleges. He was not happy with my mother's choice, so when we were discussing her final interment in the family plot in Birmingham, I mentioned did he want to sprinkle her ashes anywhere else, and he responded NO in his religion the ashes must be buried in one place. I go Bro......you know the bible says nothing of the kind about ashes being in one place......he goes silent.....he knows that I had read the bible from cover to cover as a child.....so I quickly add I am fine with her ashes staying together, but it struck me how fundamentalist are more like a country club membership where appearances are often more important than scripture. No big deal to me, and in the end he softened about his obvious upset about the cremation. I think of all those original devout Christians who are now mostly dust, and wonder if the dust has moved in a thousand years, and why it would matter in the larger scale of things. Faith is a wonderful thing, but at times I sadly think it is just scared humans making chit up as they go.

I actually think God would want us giving all our elements back to nature for new life to flourish from. Not locked up in some box. inside a vault like your body is all yours and you ain't giving it back in some selfish attempt to continue to exist after the creator decided it was time to return to the dust...

I actually think God would want us giving all our elements back to nature for new life to flourish from. Not locked up in some box. inside a vault like your body is all yours and you ain't giving it back in some selfish attempt to continue to exist after the creator decided it was time to return to the dust...


I agree. I have been watching a special on HBO about a lincoln biographer, and they showed a picture of the opened casket of the President when they were moving his body from his Springfield grave to the new Lincoln memorial in Springfield in the 1930s. He looked exactly like he did 70 years earlier except they noted he lost his eyebrows when they transferred the body to the new tomb. I find something about that process primitive and ritualistic. Man's attempts to preserve the vessel of our lives seems so lacking in understanding of the human soul that it is again primitive.

I think of the old floppy discs which had programs on eight inch discs and how a monitor would come to life, how the size and shape of those programs changed but the life of electricity exciting some atoms to produce an image which simply disappeared when the electricity was shut off. Is the life of those programs to be found in the old monitor, the floppy discs, or was it the electricity........again I find the human mind often incapable of understanding life anymore than primitive man would understand modern computers. There are scientific explanations for why the program executes and images appear, and there are scientific explanations for the human from birth to death, but nobody has ever been able to explain scientifically what came before and what follows death........so we have faith and traditions which often simply do not make sense.

I prefer cremation. I do not want to be buried.

I want my ashes placed in urns and each one of my children keep my ashes visible so I can continue to share in their lives. I can be passed down through the family generations. Wow!

“I tell ya, country clubs and cemeteries, the biggest wasters of prime real estate,”

Rodney Dangerfield

I'm a Baptist myself and have never heard of cremation being against the Bible.

I'm a Baptist myself and have never heard of cremation being against the Bible.


My brother is not handling my mother's death well. He took some abuse from her with her final placement in hospice, and she said some hurtful words to him and his wife. My niece left the room and did not return because she did not want to remember her grandmother saying mean things to her mom.

So my brother has been uncomfortable about the cremation thing and was going to out christian me with the keep the ashes together. He also argued with her about the urn and box which the box had a sticker that it was made in China. My brother argued with her that no way was he going to put her final ashes in something made in China.....he is a bigshot contractor for Cat and he has no use for China, but in the end when folks are dying and grieving is involved you just have roll with the punches.....I corrected him from the bible, but quickly said it was his call. Just signed the cremation papers which in AZ apparently all children have to sign the same. Services will be in Birmingham in October as it will take 15 days to process the Az paperwork and release the ashes. All new learning curve for a family first.

It's amazing how a book of old stories and superstitions mold people.Common sense evaporates and delusions prevail.

Louis CK

What happens after you die?
Lot's of things happen after you die - They just don't involve you.

I finally found the way I want to go out....

Another alternative .... one can have a "natural" burial here:

http://www.glendalenaturepreserve.org/

Not too far from Pensacola ... just a little bit north of DeFuniak.

SheWrites wrote:I finally found the way I want to go out....

I love it!!!!!!